Pirate Wolf Trilogy (125 page)

When she ran out of breath and words, Dante
stared at her, then at William Chandler. “Slight exaggerations,
sir, although I admit I am not the best of swimmers.”

William detected steel beneath the
self-effacing humor and chuckled. “She’s much like her mother in
that respect. When my Elizabeth laid her case before the king to
give his consent for our betrothal even I looked around the room
searching for the fellow who was being described in such glorious
terms. No harm intended, Captain, and my apology is sincere.”

Dante nodded. “I have some
experience with female family members who liken the act of catching
a mouse to Drake’s sacking of Cartagena. I am also aware that
several hundred thousand ducats worth of treasure would likely test
the honesty of any man, but you may rest assured, Master Chandler,
I have no designs on the
Nuestro
Santisimo
Victorio
other than a natural
curiosity.”

“May I assume you would like to see
her?”

“I would, indeed.”

William stood and held a hand down to Eva.
“Come along then. We’ll leave Billy Crab to tend our supper and see
that it does not char. That damn bird was a wily beast and
difficult to catch. Probably tough as string too, but it will have
to do.”

He lit a lantern and led the way along a
damp, winding tunnel in the rock. At various points along the way,
the light revealed stacks of crates, ropes, and barrels of
supplies. They followed the natural curves, pausing where William
raised the lantern to show offshoots branching out of the main
tunnel like tentacles.

“A man could get lost in here and wander for
days without finding the way out. I know this from cruel
experience.”

He chuckled and carried on
until they came to a long, straight stretch with a light blooming
faintly at the far end. The passage began to slope downward and the
ground underfoot became soft with moss and mud. Around a final bend
the ceiling rose, the walls spread wide on either side and they
found themselves in yet another glittering blue-green cavern, this
one twice the size of the first, filled with haunting echoes from
the constant
ping ping ping
of water dripping from the walls and
ceiling.

Dante halted, the sight before him causing
his breath to stop somewhere in his throat.

The broken, canted hull of the lost treasure
galleon was settled deep in the silt at the bottom of another wide
pool. Most of it was underwater, with just a few shattered timbers
sticking up above the surface. Her masts were gone. Her enormous
superstructure had been razed and scraped away, leaving only the
flat, scarred planking of the maindeck behind. The hull itself
showed signs of tremendous damage; gashes and dents where the wood
was hove-to on the rocks. There were lanterns hung fore and aft on
protruding timbers which cast an eerie light down over the sunken
wreck and made the ceiling of limestone overhead undulate with
shades of brilliant yellow and green. A maze of ropes covered her
like a spider’s web stem to stern leading to pulleys and winches
that were obviously being used to salvage her treasure.

Dante walked to the water’s edge and stood
staring at the giant hulk. “My God,” he whispered. “My good sweet
God, she’s real.”

“Aye, she’s real all right,” William said.
“Near as I can figure, the storm blew her into the Tongue and
smashed her up against the reef at every turn. She likely had no
steerage by the time she was in the bight, no sails, no rudder, and
was at the mercy of the wind and the sea. Both conspired to send
her spinning into a whirlpool that sucked her under the lip of rock
and into this cavern.

“From the seaward side, the opening is too
low to suppose a ship this size could clear it, but I have seen the
effect of stormy seas hereabout. The gap yawns and the tide sweeps
out enough for the current to suck a broken hull through. The souls
aboard would have had no chance. As you can see,

we found a belly full of the ones who tried
to hide.”

He aimed his lantern toward a shadowy side
of the cavern and Eva gasped as the light revealed an entire
macabre wall stacked high with bones and skulls. Some of the tiny
iridescent creatures had taken residence in empty eye sockets
making it seem as though hundreds of glittering eyeballs were
staring at them.

“Creepish, aye,” William said, chuckling at
the looks on both their faces. “Too many to bury but we didn’t know
what else to do with them.”

Gabriel’s attention had already shifted to
another source of glittering lights. Gold, in the form of plates
and goblets and crucifixes were set out on crates and chests.
Pillars of gold and silver bullion bars were stacked as high as a
man’s shoulders, built between casks full of coins and jewels.
Dress swords belonging to the scores of noblemen who had perished
on board the galleon formed a bejewelled armory against the cavern
wall, the golden hilts set with rubies, sapphires, pearls, and
emeralds.

Eva stared, moving slightly behind her
father’s shoulder as if the sight of such an enormous treasure was
too frightening to contemplate or believe. Even Gabriel, who had
seen more than his fair share of wealth taken from captured
treasure galleons, could feel his pulse quickening.

“Barely a tenth of what’s down there still,”
William commented, standing at the edge of the pool. “Billy ‘n me,
we had a couple of native divers helping for a while, but they
tried to slit our throats one night and so that was the end of
them. It’s slow work, as you can imagine. Billy-boy has lungs the
size of barrels but he can only do so much at one time. And he
doesn’t let me dive anymore after I came up once with a fish
wriggling in my eye hole. The sight gave him the night sweats for
weeks afterward.”

“Would you mind if I take a closer
look?”

William nodded and reached for a strange,
bell-shaped object made of canvas covered with a layer of black
tar. He tipped it and hung the lantern to a hook on the inside. “It
holds enough air to keep the wick burning for a few minutes. We’ve
a larger one rigged for when Billy is diving and needs to take a
breath Works a treat, it does.”

Dante unbuckled his belts and dropped them
onto the mossy ground. He shed his boots and stockings then
untucked his shirt and peeled it over his head. His breeches went
next in a display of natural immodesty that had William casting a
sidelong glance at his daughter.

“Anything else you would care to tell me?”
he asked when Dante’s naked body had sunk below the surface of the
pool.

“Not particularly,” Eva said quietly, her
cheeks flaming. She followed the glow from the bell shaped light as
Dante swam down and disappeared through a large gap in the
hull.

“The Pirate Wolf’s cub, eh? He has a brother
and together they’ve quite a reputation as the Hell Twins, and
having seen him, I vow it is for more than one reason.”

“He saved my life, Father.”

“Aye, so you keep telling me. And what was
the payment he demanded?”

Eva met her father’s single
accusing eye. “He demanded nothing. What I
gave
him, I gave freely.”

William contemplated the defiant set to
Eva’s jaw, a look that reminded him so clearly of her mother that
he raised a hand in contrition. “I’ll not attempt to suggest I have
the right to chastise you, Daughter. You’re a woman grown and I’ve
no right to be shocked or to pass judgment.”

“It is not my intent to shock you, Father.
But I am not going to apologize for seeking comfort when I needed
it. You are correct: I am not a little girl anymore. You have been
gone for four long years and I have had to do a lot of growing up
on my own. In the last two months alone, I have been cheated on and
lied to; I’ve been shot and burned and left alone on a plague ship.
I’ve travelled halfway around the world to find you and if it
displeases you that I found a man who is compassionate and
thoughtful and exciting enough with whom I might share more than
empty words and promises, well then… I am truly sorry for that. The
truth is, I went willingly into his bed and would do so again if he
wanted me to… which he hasn’t. We’ve been too busy fighting the
Spanish and trying to rescue you from God-knows-what fate
Muertraigo and your former business partner have planned!”

In the silence that followed, William’s one
eye blinked. Standing a few feet away, his naked body gleaming and
dripping water, Gabriel Dante looked from father to daughter as the
echo of her words resonated off the walls of the cavernous
chamber.

Eva turned at the sound of the canvas bell
being set on the rocks. Seeing Dante, and not knowing how long he
had been standing there or how much he had overheard, she shook her
head and whirled away, hurrying back along the passage they had
taken from the first cavern.

Billy Crab was still seated by the fire. The
capon was missing a leg and there was grease on Billy’s chin, but
he did little to acknowledge her return other than to nod his head
and continue turning the spit.

She sighed and took a seat, her shoulders
slumping.

Billy glanced at her, then quickly returned
his gaze to the fire. After a full minute of throbbing silence, he
looked over again.

“I heard as how you saw my mam,” he ventured
to say. “Is she well? Did she speak o’ me?”

“She is very well, and she spoke of you with
great pride and tenderness.”

Billy grinned, revealing only gums and no
teeth. “She’ll be that an’ more when I buy her a big house an’ a
big shop an’ hire a hundred cooks to do the bakin’ for her.”

“I am entirely thrilled for you,” she said
curtly. It was enough to silence the lad and keep him from
venturing forth any more conversation. He contented himself by
imagining his mother dressed in silks and brocades, while across
the width of the firepit, Eva was left to wonder what would happen
next, now that her father had been found and Dante no longer needed
to bear the burden of being her sole protector.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Gabriel’s thoughts were indeed divided as he
dressed and walked back through the passage with Chandler. The
older man’s estimate of how much treasure remained in the hold of
the wreck could easily be doubled, judging by what Gabriel had
seen. While underwater, he had caught murky glimpses of countless
broken barrels, crates, and chests in the one large cargo bay, the
contents spilled in glittering heaps across the decking. He knew
from experience there would be bigger bays packed full, as well as
a wealth of personal jewels in the cabins that had been occupied by
the rich hidalgos returning to Spain. A hundred men diving for a
hundred days might be able to raise most of it to the surface, but
they would be hampered by the depth as well as the condition of the
sunken hull. He had been hard-pressed to stay under for as long as
it took the lantern to burn out, smothered by lack of air, and
there were certain to be blocked passageways and collapsed timbers
to slow the salvage.

The rest of his musings were distracted by
the echo of Eva’s words and he could tell, by the glower on William
Chandler’s face, he was not alone in that.

“Well? What are your thoughts, Sir?”
Chandler asked, slowing as they drew near the cavern where Billy
and Eva sat by the fire.

“I… think we were both caught off guard and
were perhaps swept away in a moment of high emotion. I don’t say
this as an excuse for my own behaviour, but in truth, what with all
that has happened in such a short period of time…”

William stopped.

“I was speaking of the treasure,” he said
dryly. “As my Eva said, she’s a woman full grown now and her mind
is her own. I’ll not say that I applaud or condone her actions, but
considering what she has had to endure, I’ll not pass judgement.
Not for the time being at any rate.”

He started walking again. Gabriel blew out a
breath and followed, taking several long strides before he came
abreast the older man again.

“With regards to salvaging the treasure, the
best divers I have in my crew can remain underwater for perhaps two
minutes. The lower deck of the hulk is roughly forty feet under,
which cuts that time in half.”

“As I said, the larger domes help to hold
extra air for breathing and we’ve two that Billy uses.”

“Then there is the weight of the treasure
itself. I noticed the pulley system you have rigged.”

“Aye. We can fill and haul about five
buckets a day. ‘Tis tiring work shifting all that bullion,” he
added with a wry chuckle.

“I have no doubt it is. Is there another way
of entering that cavern?”

“By boat,” Chandler nodded.
“The same way the
Victorio
came in. Frankly, we didn’t know there was
another access from up top until you dropped down from the rocks.
How, by blazing hell, did you find it?”

Dante explained about the shifting green and
blue rays of light. “I expect if we look in daylight we’ll find the
opening overgrown with weed and gorse.”

“A quick way in but impractical.” They
approached the fire and William sat beside Eva, giving her a big
hug. “You’re both lucky you didn’t break bones on the slide
down.”

Dante settled, cross-legged, opposite them,
his hair gleaming wetly in the firelight. “Speaking of getting out,
my men will be looking for me come daylight.”

“They’ll not have missed you already?”

Dante glanced at Eva, who managed to avoid
eye contact. “No. I doubt they’ll become concerned until morning.
How far are we from Spanish Wells?”

“Half a day of hard rowing by the shortest
route we’ve managed to find, but a full day if by land. Happily
there are no short-cuts for a deep-bellied ship. Muertraigo and the
bastard will have to stay in the middle of the channel and keep
their sails trimmed and their eyes sharp for underwater coral. You
said you hulled one of their ships and another was damaged?”